the Sam Jackson College Experience

UPDATE: Was performance art in and of itself.

New Haven, Conn. — April 17, 2008

Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body.

She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.

So there you have it: the University offered a quick explanation after initiating an investigation. Original post follows.

I will be watching to see how Yale deals with what will certainly explode (is exploding) into a huge controversy: as reported by the Yale Daily News, a senior art project is soon to be presented in which a student continually inseminated herself and then forced miscarriages, preserving the blood and filming the process.

Beginning next Tuesday, Aliza Shvarts ‘08 will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock — saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

No, not a joke. {Update, 10 hours after the fact: Yes, actually a hoax! Thankfully.}

I tuned into a webinar about crisis management over the summer hosted by Karine Joly’s Higher Ed Experts, and saw some interesting insight into how schools can manage crises.

Too bad that Michael Dame, director of Web and Communications at Virginia Tech, won’t be giving his webinar about online crisis management for a few weeks. Yale could use some advice right about now, I think. This story has already hit Drudge report, and the YDN has been having some trouble with the traffic.

Oh, also? Yale is just about to host a big climate change conference with governors from the US, premiers from Canada, nobel laureates, etc.

Let’s watch the ensuing negative PR explosion… more on this as things develop.

If you want to check the temperature of the blogosphere or interwebs at large, you can see just a really, really furious reaction bubbling up. Antisemitic pro-choicers seem to be some of the nastiest commentators.

Because the YDN site is having problems with traffic, the full article is available after the break. For a sample of her other artwork, check a piece in Dimensions magazine (Yale publication) from January.

UPDATE: In addition to Drudge, it is now on the front page of Fox News, under “Outrage Over ‘Self-Abortion Art’” — fantastic. Lots of quotes from the National Right to Life Committee people.
UPDATE2: In addition, I should add that it’s also been on Jezebel (more than once), Gawker, Perez Hilton, … and many more. That’s a lot of eyeballs.
UPDATE3: I would additionally note that it is still worth considering the plausibility of this account, effectiveness rates for the herbs in question, and general health risks rendering it more or less likely that it was possible to undertake this. However, the YDN is not one to make up stories like this, so I am going to wait and see how it plays out more before calling “hoax” on it.

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There has been a 14 percent decrease in the number of Yale students getting Pell grants in the last 8 years, according to Pell Institute senior scholar Tom Mortenson study, reports the Yale Daily News. Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzell disagreed by citing more limited data which statistics professors at Yale argued were statistically invalid. Instead, it seems he prefers to somewhat cherry pick his data, looking at families % with less than $60,000 a year. Quotes from the article, emphasis mine:

Mortenson said he was especially concerned about the 14-percent drop in Pell students at Yale in the past eight years, given that the percentage of Pell students at Harvard University increased by 53 percent over the same time period, according to his Dec. 2007 analysis.As the percentage of low-income children in the K-12 school system increases, Mortenson said, Yale has a responsibility to help educate these students — a responsibility that it is not meeting.

“The real question is, ‘Who is trying to deal with this huge demographic tide, and who isn’t?’” Mortenson said. “As I look at Harvard’s data, I say Harvard is, and as I look at Yale’s data, I say Yale isn’t.”

Yale’s recent announcement of an unprecedented increase in undergraduate financial aid did not change his analysis.

Mortenson called Yale’s new financial-aid initiative — which dramatically reduces the expected parental contribution from families making up to $200,000 a year and eliminates the need for student loans — a mere “public-relations gesture.”

So… there’s failure all around, but Yale is especially lagging. Brenzel does reasonably point out that some of Harvard’s success with Pell grant numbers could just be that Harvard has a better ability to get them to come, rather than special recruitment efforts; Harvard’s yields are certainly very impressive in general and a Harvard admissions letter can be pretty sticky. But that just means that Yale needs to work harder and reach out more to low income students. This might not be the fault only of the admissions office, it could be that they are not able to effectively allocate their resources to do so without compromising other parts of their mission which are valued more. Luckily, here at Yale… they don’t really have to choose! The university has the resources needed to make significant change here, and if it isn’t moving up the charts on this, it can’t point at Harvard or anyone else and try to avoid blame.

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As covered by the Yale Daily News, Yale University has elected to continue its Early Action program.I’m not sure I like their reasoning.

The decision was made by weighing the benefits of joining Harvard, Princeton, UVA etc. vs. sticking it out with MIT and Stanford (who both vowed to keep Early). Opinions of those watching the decision were rather mixed (Decision to keep early action earns mixed response, YDN).

The University made the right strategic decision to maintain its early option after Harvard and Princeton discontinued theirs, said Chuck Hughes, president of the college admissions counseling firm Road to College and a senior admissions officer at Harvard from 1995 to 2000. Many of the students who would have applied early to Harvard or Princeton will likely apply to Yale, said Hughes, who predicted that Yale will see a 25 to 50 percent increase in early applications next year.

Hmm, Chuck makes it sound like Yale was just looking out for #1. What about all those poor students who didn’t have the resources or know-how to apply early, the ones that Harvard and Princeton claim to be helping?

“This provision provides students the option of expressing a preference for Yale, while freeing them from the pressures associated with binding early decision programs,” he [Brenzel] said.

Because students admitted under early action are not required to accept the school’s offer until May, Brenzel said, applicants from low-income families are able to compare financial aid offers before making a decision about where to go to school. Since switching from early decision to early action in 2002, Yale has seen an increase in the number of financial aid students who apply early, Levin said. [YDN]

On the first point, couldn’t there just be some sort of standardized “first preference” checkbox on the common application? A standardized agreement which says: this school is my first choice school. Legally the signer would be obliged to send this form to only one school, but it would be completely nonbinding (assuming this is a new fantasy world where early programs do not exist). On the second point, might it not see a greater still increase if it dropped its EA entirely? I’m not really feeling convinced that Yale has the high ground when talking about whats best for applicants, particularly lower-income applicants.

An interesting problem that is on many people’s minds here at Exeter: the very best applicants poaching spots from multiple schools if they apply regular everywhere and thereby creating admissions chaos. I’ve had more than a few people, after congratulating me, express their happiness that I won’t be competing with them for slots at other schools. I’m not even the archetypal ’spot-stealing’ student, either–it’s just one fewer competitor.

In conversations with Yale admissions officers, high school counselors and administrators also expressed concern that eliminating early admissions might lead to more competitive students receiving multiple offers from top- and second-tier schools that would otherwise have gone to other students, Levin said. [YDN]

Am I happy that I had an Early Action acceptance last month? Absolutely. All the same, I don’t feel that the system can’t be improved here somehow. My real question, which I haven’t seen adequately answered by anyone at Harvard or Princeton or UVA or elsewhere, is just how eliminating early programs reduces college stress. ‘Starting the process early’ isn’t a big concern, since it’s just one application. If anything, starting the process early with just one school is a good way of ‘easing in’ to the college admissions process. There are some stress-relieving factors that would come up if everyone had only regular decision, but I think that the looming fears and threats of super-applicants applying to more and more schools might counterbalance that relief–and then some.